Representative volume element

In the theory of composite materials, the representative elementary volume (REV) (also called the representative volume element (RVE) or the unit cell) is the smallest volume over which a measurement can be made that will yield a value representative of the whole. In the case of periodic materials, one simply chooses a periodic unit cell (which, however, may be non-unique), but in random media, the situation is much more complicated. For volumes smaller than the RVE, a representative property cannot be defined and the continuum description of the material involves Statistical Volume Element (SVE) and random fields. The property of interest can include mechanical properties such as elastic moduli, hydrogeological properties, electromagnetic properties, thermal properties, and other averaged quantities that are used to describe physical systems.

Rodney Hill defined the RVE as a sample of a heterogeneous material that:

In essence, statement (1) is about the material’s statistics (i.e. spatially homogeneous and ergodic), while statement (2) is a pronouncement on the independence of effective constitutive response with respect to the applied boundary conditions.

Both of these are issues of mesoscale (L) of the domain of random microstructure over which smoothing (or homogenization) is being done relative to the microscale (d). As L/d goes to infinity, the RVE is obtained, while any finite mesoscale involves statistical scatter and, therefore, describes an SVE. With these considerations one obtains bounds on effective (macroscopic) response of elastic (non)linear and inelastic random microstructures. In general, the stronger the mismatch in material properties, or the stronger the departure from elastic behavior, the larger is the RVE. The finite-size scaling of elastic material properties from SVE to RVE can be grasped in compact forms with the help of scaling functions universally based on stretched exponentials. Considering that the SVE may be placed anywhere in the material domain, one arrives at a technique for characterization of continuum random fields.

Another definition of the RVE was proposed by Drugan and Willis:

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